Sunday, March 26, 2000
Mysterious man's paintings emerge for extraordinary exhibit
BY OWEN FINDSEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Robert Herrmann never had a telephone. He never had a car. As far as is known, he had no close friends. He wrote mysteries and poems that were never published. He painted hundreds of extraordinary paintings he never showed to anyone.
When he died in 1996 at age 73 in his Pleasant Ridge home, a treasury of paintings was discovered. Buildings or parts of buildings, offices, warehouses, factories and houses — all in brilliant colors, drenched in sunlight. Yet there never is an image of a person. It's colorful but lonely art.
He was mysterious, but no recluse. He worked in the New York Public Library for a decade, was a Russian translator in Washington, D.C., for another decade. He was a stock broker in San Francisco and did tax related work in Phoenix and Seattle. He spoke five languages and attended five universities, studying art and architecture. He retired to Cincinnati in 1984.
The first exhibition of his work is at Cincinnati Art Galleries.
“Usually when someone phones and says that they want me to see a deceased relative's paintings, they're not very good,” says gallery owner Randy Sandler. “For some reason I went to see these, and I was blown away.”
The way Mr. Herrmann painted suggests the kind of work shown at the Modern Art Society, predecessor of the Contemporary Arts Center, in the early 1940s.
Mr. Herrmann was studying art and architecture at the University of Cincinnati at the time. Popular American artists Ralston Crawford, Charles Demuth and Charles Sheeler sought a way to blend European modernism with the American scene.
Factories, office buildings, smoke stacks, symbols of mighty American industry and commerce were refined to geometric patterns of bright colors. Texture and detail were removed.
During the '50s and '60s, Mr. Herrmann joined the quest. He photographed and painted architectural details as pure pattern. He wrote short descriptive poems, such as: “Trapezoids and parallelograms of clean sky, peering capriciously between concrete piers and slabs.”
He explored the American Precisionism style, which is returning to favor with museums and collectors.
His paintings are stimulating patterns in precisely balanced colors. The views he chose are intimate details, things seen quickly and thought about for a long time.
He would select part of a scene, tight enough to be seen as pure pattern, with just enough information to reveal that the rectangles and triangles were roofs, windows and smokestacks. It is a way of working that so many artists of his generation attempted and so few did well.
Mr. Herrmann certainly must have seen many bad amateur attempts to master the method. Perhaps he was unsure that his were worthwhile. They are. They're little gems of mid-20th century Americana, in a modern mode.
Robert Lewis Herrmann, Cincinnati Art Galleries through April 8. 381-2128.
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